A change could be on the horizon for the Auburn football program and all the other teams in the SEC as soon as the 2024 season. With Oklahoma and Texas on the verge of joining the conference, it seems likely that the SEC will change the way schedules are done and each team will have three permanent conference opponents every year.
Fans of all SEC teams are sharing their opinions about who they want their team to face every year, and a lot of attention was brought to Nick Saban’s complaints about who would be Alabama’s three permanent rivals (Auburn, LSU, and Tennessee).
There are a lot of differing opinions when it comes to the proposed schedule change and who each team should play every year, but players from the reigning national champions were in agreement on one thing: The Dawgs should have the Auburn football team as one of their permanent rivals.
According to Mike Griffith of Dawg Nation, three Georgia players—who played high school football in Georgia before attending UGA—were asked who they would like the Dawgs’ permanent rivals to be, and they answered like this:
"Chris Smith: Florida, Auburn and TennesseeBroderick Jones: Auburn, Tennessee and MissouriKearis Jackson: Tennessee, Auburn and Alabama"
Jackson justified his answers by noting that those are the matchups that mean the most to their fans, and that the players want to be consistently going up against “the best of the best.”
With the infamy of being “The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” and the two teams already playing each other every year, there is a lot of history between the Dawgs and the Tigers, and it’s an annual event that should absolutely keep happening.
According to Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated, Auburn football’s proposed three permanent rivals would be Alabama, Georgia, and Vanderbilt. The Dawgs would face Auburn, Florida, and Kentucky.